


there's blood in my eyes(but none of it's mine)

by PandaFlower



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/F, Meet-Cute, Mikoto survives the Massacre AU, Sapphic September, Time Travel, but with swords, meeting your girlhood squish when she's young and hot, the best kind of meet cute, to throats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 16:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16044641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandaFlower/pseuds/PandaFlower
Summary: Mikoto doesn't like the idea of her youngest out by himself in this political climate. It saves them both.





	there's blood in my eyes(but none of it's mine)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprx77](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/gifts), [blackkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/gifts).



Mikoto is not content to wait for death.

This tension between her clan and the village, it is unbearable tonight. She feels it in the knots in her back, the tension in her shoulders, the tightness in her scalp like an impending headache. She wants to scream. Would scream if she didn’t feel watched every second of the day, every day, since communication with Hokage’s office had so utterly broken down.

Mikoto wants to carve their eyes out, whoever they are. See how they like it.

Fugaku sits at the family shrine, silent, stoic, patiently waiting for a sign he’s desperately hoping for. _Defeated_ , a part of her hisses, furious and clawed and eager to lash out. She offers him no comfort. She has spoken all she feels needs be said on the matter and says nothing further, refuses to.

There is a place waiting for her at the shrine, a space by her husband’s side that awaits her should she take it, and she should, they’re in this together, have been since they exchanged cups and truths and blades, but—

But there is nothing Mikoto wants less than to sit and wait, helpless, sick to her stomach with not knowing, resisting the urge to claw her skin off from the heavy, crawling tension. Patient she is not, and content to let others sort things out she has never been. Mikoto wants, needs, desperately, to _move._

“It’s late,” she says into the stillness, the words thick in her throat. Fugaku turns his head to acknowledge her, but he says nothing. “Sasuke isn’t home yet. I don’t like the idea of him being out so late.”

And the more she turns it over in her head the more she latches on to the idea. Surely, _surely,_ on this night of all nights it wasn’t safe to leave a child outside their walls, vulnerable, unknowing of the danger as they kept him? The thought doesn’t sit well, bubbling and acidic with sudden anxiety. Mikoto touches the inside of her forearm, skimming over the storage seal cleverly tattooed in white ink where she keeps her katana ever close to hand.

_(A lady does not go tattooed but Mikoto was of the opinion that if a lady couldn’t get around that restriction she wasn’t much of a kunoichi.)_

“I’m—” _going out,_ is what she was going to say, but that lingers too close to asking permission and that _rankles._ Mikoto has never needed permission. She acts.

So she does.

She hurries into her sandals and slips out the door, with every step away from her oppressive house more sure than ever in her decision. It isn’t right to have her children out of reach in such uncertain times. Itachi, she thinks with a pang, has gone beyond all reach, and whether she has fault in that will haunt her forever, she knows, but her youngest, her little Sasuke is still within her grasp.

The streets are strangely quiet around the Uchiha compound as she hurries away from them, trepidation climbing up her throat and a sense of imminent danger sliding down her spine. There are shadows too deep and too curious to miss them tracking her path. Mikoto itches to draw her sword. She keeps them loose at her side instead, too much a kunoichi to give away her nervousness. The anger is back, hot as ever, the snarling, lashing thing she keeps restrained behind a smile bridling at the unknown threat.

Something tells her the sign Fugaku hopes for will be more final than he thinks.

It’s a near bone-rattling relief to see Sasuke coming from around a corner, little empty bento swinging from his hand by his favorite tomato patterned handkerchief. The part of her heart forever reserved for her children can’t help but coo as his sweet face lights up to see her, even as the rest resolves to see him survive the night no matter how much blood she needs to spill to ensure it.

“Mama!” Sasuke cries happily, running to all but leap into her arms. “What are you doing out so late?” he asks, tiny face scrunching in worry. It never failed to amuse Mikoto how convinced her youngest was that she was something delicate and precious to protect, always insisting he accompany her on errands as her ‘escort’ and trying to carry things for her. Itachi had known too well she was a kunoichi to ever think she couldn’t take care of herself.

“Ara, I was just thinking the same of you, Sasuke.” Mikoto smiled, delicately tapping his nose just to watch it scrunch. “Why, you almost missed dinner!”

“No!” Sasuke looked so horrified she just had to giggle.

“Come along now,” she said, hoisting him up on her hip. He was really too big for her to be carrying him around like this but she feared pausing to scoop him up later would lose her precious seconds. Predictably, Sasuke began to whine at the perceived ‘babying’ which she hushed with a forcibly cheery admonishment about dinner getting cold if they didn’t hurry.

She regrets this happy illusion she weaves for her son. Soon, it’ll be nothing but bitter tatters in the face of what awaits them at the compound, blood and death and bitter madness fit to choke someone. She can practically taste it on the wind, all the short hairs of her nape and arms standing on end. She shifts Sasuke to a more secure hold and makes her way back to the compound, in no apparent hurry despite her earlier assertions of the necessity.

The shadows were moving the corner of her eye, creeping closer.

 _Like slinking spiders,_ she thinks viciously, _unknowing they were stalking a bigger predator._ Mikoto had seen war. This was _nothing._ She refused for it to be otherwise.

The gate to the compound was within sight when Mikoto makes her move; shoving Sasuke’s face into her shoulder and bounding over the wall in a smooth leap, rolling into the shadow of a tight alley and darting around and away from the main thoroughfare where the sound of cut off cries and bodies falling could be heard. The copper stench of blood was already thick in the air, wafting from open windows and doors fallen ajar. There are bodies strewn about, lain carelessly on the street, lolling limply out of their front doors and off their porches. Mikoto doesn’t dare stop for grief. It would just have to catch up, like always.

“Mama, what’s—” Sasuke tries to ask, voice tight and high and thick with building tears. Mikoto hushes him quickly. She knows what he sees over her shoulder.

“Hush, darling, I know.” She murmurs softly. It’s an act of tremendous will to keep it so but she is a kunoichi to the bone, tremendous will is her first weapon, honed in the fires of war and tempered by loss borne with bared teeth. “Quiet now, Mama’s got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Sasuke gasped, breath hitching with a poorly stifled sob, “But what about Itachi? He might get hurt!”

 _What, indeed,_ she thinks coldly. What would she do if Itachi found her? Defend herself, most likely. Defend Sasuke until her dying breath. Kill him? She didn’t know. But today is not the day to find out if Itachi inherited kinslaying from _her_ side of the family so she murmurs something about Itachi being a big, strong ANBU who can protect himself, and hurries on, slinking from shadow to shadow.

She catches an ANBU in a suspiciously blank mask digging a knife into a dead man’s eye socket and pulls her katana and whirls out with red eyes to decapitate the bastard in one smooth movement. Sasuke makes a distressed noise, hiding his face in her neck with telling wetness.

Mikoto kicks the ANBU away, furious. The vultures weren’t even going to wait until they finished killing her clan to scavenge on them! It’s reckless, the katon forming in her hands, her stomach, her _eyes,_ but she doesn’t care. Mikoto is so far past caring. She may be fleeing but see if she’ll let them pick her kin over without protest.

Black fire consumes the bodies before her, cursed sparks catching on houses and gardens and hanging paper lanterns, going from black to bright orange. Amaterasu consumes all in its path; how many would be saved was in the Goddess’ hands tonight.

Mikoto had her own hands full with all she could save.

Blessedly, the Naka Shrine was untouched, the specter of death and the now spreading fires not yet reaching it.

Mikoto locks the doors from the inside and kicks the tatami mat off the hidden store room entrance, leaping down the stairs with a grunt, setting her son down at last and tugging him to the ancient stone the Uchiha have inscribed their secrets on since the first of her ancestors took the name.

“Mama, what’s going on?” Sasuke tugged at her apron, fretful and teary. “What’s this room? Where’s Itachi and Dad?” Mikoto cups his cheek, thumbs away a fresh tear, and musters a smile for him. “I’m so sorry, my sweet boy, there’s too much to explain right now. We got in over our heads, your father and I, but I won’t let our mistakes fall on your head. _I promise you._ ”

Sasuke scrunched his face unhappily, clinging to her hand like she might disappear if he didn’t. “I’m scared,” he sniffed.

“I know, baby, I know,” Mikoto soothed, “I’m getting us to safety.” _I hope,_ she doesn’t say. Instead, she turns to the stone and let’s her sharingan spin, three tomoe and then a design all her own, hand trembling as she skims the stone, tracing the fine lines that reveal themselves only to the highest power an Uchiha can offer on their own.

Overhead, the door rattles as someone tries to get in. Sasuke whimpers, clutching tighter.

Hair-fine carved kanji scattered across the rough surface, describing sharingan techniques each more forbidden than the last; genjutsu, ninjutsu, space-time techniques—

She finds what she’s looking for just as the doors are blown open with a resounding bang, Sasuke letting out a frightened scream reflexively. No matter. Where they were was obvious enough. She turns, pulling Sasuke close, mangekyo whirling, a hot trickle too viscous to be tears beginning to spill from the corner of her eye, to take in the lurid orange mask.

Mikoto smiles.

The world warps viciously.

She is victorious.

* * *

Mikoto touches down amidst wild shrubbery and stumbles to her knees, Sasuke crying out and tugging on her sleeve frantically. Mikoto can’t see whatever it is frightening him past the blood in her eyes. Then a presence ahead registers to her sense and Mikoto is moving in a burst of movement, sweeping her sword up as she shoves her child behind her.

Evidently, she has surprise on her side, getting in close to whoever it is to to lay the edge of her blade against their throat. The person — woman — sways back in alarm, the shift of cloth and clack of armor signaling her arms moving up before the threat of having her throat slit stilled her.

“Who are you?” Mikoto demanded, stepping in close when the other shifted. “Where are we?”

“Uchiha-san.” And damn if her voice wasn’t distractingly low and mellow, stern as the tone currently was. “You are among allies. This is unnecessary.”

“That’s not an _answer,_ ” Mikoto snarls, blinking furiously to clear the bloody tears from her eyes. Gods damn it, she didn’t have _time_ for this!

Time was everything right now.

“Sasuke.” Mikoto grabbed the breastplate she could feel pressed to her chest. “Do Mama a favor and tell me what you see?”

“A pretty lady.” Sasuke warbled immediately. “She has red hair, and super old armor. Like in the pictures!”

Mikoto took a deep breath, resisting the urge to pinch between her eyebrows. A bleary squint did yield a red blob too high and defined to be the blood in her eyes, and a heart-shaped face. The armor under her hand was indeed old fashioned lacquer plate, the kind long gone out of fashion in Mikoto’s time as being too bulky and noisy for their purposes.

So, not just space, but time too.

It _smelled_ like Fire country is the thing, unmistakably, oaks and lilacs and sages and wild buckwheats in early summer, and the towering trees certainly couldn’t come from anywhere else she’d ever been to. So, how far exactly did she get them from the village, and how quickly could she get them out of the country? Warring era armor suggested Warring _era_ and no way was Mikoto letting them get mixed up in that.

War was no place for children; for her child.

“Where are we?” Mikoto repeated

Her impromptu captive jutted her chin, and something about it sparked a memory too faint to surface, and stated coldly, “We stand at the territory that will become a village. This particular spot has been surveyed for a temple for the Uchiha clan. Something I assume you would know considering you are an Uchiha.” There was an underlying question there. “Unless… you are from far away.”

“I’m—” Mikoto started, swallowed apprehensively; a _time technique?_ Not space, not space-time, but purely time?

“Uchiha-san.” A rustle; hands laying gently on her biceps. “From whence have you come? What drove you away?”

Mikoto froze, heart still, the very breath in her lungs turned cold. Fresh warmth trickled down her cheek; tentatively she reached a hand up to wipe it away, expecting blood only to stare numbly at what were clearly tears, faintly pink from the blood dried on her face. _Oh, they’re really all gone,_ she thought blankly. She blinked hard, desperately grappling to keep that numbness for her own sanity, for underneath was a yawning, hungry chasm that would gnaw her to shreds where her clan used to be.

_They are all gone._

“Mama?” Sasuke tugged urgently on her shirt and Mikoto shook herself, making to step away only to bump into a chain around her ankle. A glowing chain, apparent enough even with her slowly clearing eyesight.

Glowing chain. Red hair. Warring era.

Mikoto suddenly realized exactly who she was pressed up against, and dropped her sword with a numb hand. Now that she wasn’t focused on squinting at the redhead’s face she noticed the multitude of fine chains forming a cocoon of links and lethal spikes behind her.

“May I?” Uzumaki Mito asked, bringing a hand clutching a sleeve within Mikoto’s line of sight. Mikoto could only nod, numb grief warring with a sense of awe she’d thought long laid to rest. Mito gently wiped the blood out of her eyes, and Mikoto blinked, sight finally clearing enough to see her properly.

 _She’s so young,_ Mikoto marveled, stepping away as the chains receded. Mito was easily five years younger than her. Rather mind bending when Mikoto had only ever known her as a tough Elder with soft hands and nice smelling clothes, who let Mikoto have sleepovers with Kushina at her house and let them rummage through her chest of jewelry and pretty hair pins.

“Uzumaki-sama,” Mikoto nodded, laying a hand on Sasuke’s head to remind herself to keep her cool. She wasn’t a little girl with a silly crush on the coolest adult she knew, she was a woman in her prime, a seasoned kunoichi.

Even if Mito was really, really pretty.

Damn Mikoto’s weakness for Uzumaki.

Mito arched one elegant brow, intrigued. “You know me. I can’t say I have much of a reputation in Fire.” She paused. “Yet. And you aren’t any Uchiha I’ve met so far, and that arrival… Not teleportation? Something else?”

“Time,” Mikoto agreed. “We came through time.”

Mito’s gaze flickered briefly over her blood-splattered and singed apron. “Not a pleasant event, I take it.”

“No,” Mitoko said curtly, swallowing what could either be a sob or a snarl before it finished rising in her throat, pulling Sasuke closer.

Mito’s gaze was curious, and thankfully not pitying in the least. She offered a hand that Mikoto took automatically, offering, “We can discuss it over warm food and tea, if you like. I’ll send my brother-in-law out to finish up here; he’s been looking pasty of late anyway.”

Mikoto laughed despite herself. The sudden mental image of saying that to the Niidaime’s face too glorious not to.

“I’d like that,” Mikoto said with a watery smile, lifting Sasuke up on her hip. “Though I don’t know about the quality of my company.” She added.

Mito’s smile was warm. “I’m sure it’s just fine.”

 


End file.
